"(...) the great round wonder (...)"

"Salut au Monde!" in "Leaves of Grass"

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

"(...)What do you see Walt Whitman?Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?
I see a great round wonder rolling through space,
I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories, places, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the surface,
I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping and the sunlit part on the other side,
I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,
I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land is to me. (...)"

In
1886 a mysterious travelling circus becomes an international sensation. Open
only at night, constructed entirely in black and white, the Cirque des Rêves
delights all who wander its circular paths and warm themselves at its bonfire.
There are contortionists, performing cats, carousels and illusionists - all the
trappings of an ordinary circus. But this is no conventional spectacle. Some
tents contain clouds, some ice.

The circus seems almost to cast a spell over
its aficionados, who call themselves the rêveurs - the dreamers. And who is the
sinister man in the grey suit who watches over it all? Behind the scenes a
dangerous game is being played out by two young magicians, Celia and Marco,
who, at the behest of their masters, are forced to test the very limits of the
imagination - and of love.

A
feast for the senses, a fin-de-siècle fantasia of magic and mischief, and the
most original love story since The Time Traveller’s Wife, The Night Circus is
an extraordinary blend of fantasy and reality. It will dazzle readers young and
old with its virtuoso performance, and who knows, they might not want to leave
the world it creates.

Excerto:

“The
circus arrives without warning.

No
announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no
mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when
yesterday it was not.

The
towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be
seen.

No colour at all, save for the neighbouring trees and the grass of the
surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of
varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in
a colourless world. Even what little ground invisible from outside is black or
white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.

But
it is not open for business. Not just yet.

Within
hours everyone in town has heard about it. By afternoon the news has spread
several towns over. Word of mouth is a more effective method of advertisement
than typeset words and exclamation points on paper pamphlets or posters. It is
impressive and unusual news, the sudden appearance of a mysterious circus.
People marvel at the staggering height of the tallest tents. They stare at the
clock that sits just inside the gates that no one can properly describe.

And
the black sign painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, the one that
reads:

Opens
at Nightfall

Closes
at Dawn

What
kind of circus is only open at night?” people ask. No one has a proper answer,
yet as dusk approaches there is a substantial crowd of spectators gathering
outside the gates.”